This Famous City In Switzerland Is Overrated And Not Worth A Visit, Per Rick Steves

Rick Steves, with his line of guidebooks, travel shows, and blog, has been a go-to reference for many travelers for years — Steves can break down the best European destinations based on someone's interests, he's got advice for where to go on a budget, and he's full of suggestions for the yummiest places to eat. But along with Steves' recommendations of where you should go, just as importantly, he has some thoughts on where you should not go. When it comes to Switzerland, that place is Geneva.

It's not that Steves thinks that Geneva is inherently bad by any means, but that you just shouldn't consider it worth putting at the top of your travel bucket list. He broke down his issues with the destination on Rick Steves' Europe, calling it "one of Switzerland's largest and most sterile cities." Further, he gave it "the 'nice place to live but I wouldn't want to visit' award." He noted that Geneva is "pleasantly situated on a lake — just like Buffalo is." That seems like a bit of a burn on Buffalo, too, or you could take it as confirmation that you might as well visit somewhere closer to home rather than plan a trip to Geneva.

At the southern tip of Lake Geneva in southwestern Switzerland, Geneva is a significant player on the international stage. It is home to the headquarters of the World Health Organization, World Trade Organization, International Committee of the Red Cross, and the list goes on. So, it's certainly one of those places people have heard about if they have ever watched the news. Steves acknowledged that; however, that's still not enough for him. "While it's famous, name familiarity is a rotten reason to go somewhere," he wrote on Rick Steves' Europe. Steves isn't alone in his assessment. Geneva has a bit of a reputation online for being boring and not worth a long visit. 

For one thing, Geneva doesn't have any major, world-renowned landmarks like so many other European cities — there are no iconic bridges like in London, no Roman Colosseum, not even a mermaid statue like in Copenhagen.
 While business travelers may have many reasons to visit Geneva, when it comes to the leisure market, the appeal just doesn't really seem to be there for everyone. One of the other biggest sticking points? The prices. A person wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter), "Geneva is obscenely expensive, even for someone from London." Another X user said, "Geneva has to be one of the dullest, drabbest, unfriendliest, cardboard cut out of a major city in Western Europe. It's not that it's expensive, it's that it's so overpriced for such a boring place."

If you plan to follow Rick Steves' advice and skip Geneva, where should you go instead? Steves likes Bern, the capital of Switzerland. He called it "the most rewarding place to experience urban Switzerland ... one of Europe's finest surviving medieval towns" on Rick Steves' Europe. If you still want to enjoy a waterfront city, Steves proposed checking out Luzern on Lake Lucerne as another Geneva alternative.

Travelers on social media also have suggestions for where to go in Switzerland instead of Geneva. One X user suggested: "Get out into the mountains – anything longer than a half day in Geneva drags." Steves would be on board with that idea — Steves fell in love with hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc, which runs through the Swiss Alps. Another person on X found a nearby city preferable to Geneva: "Geneva was a total disappointment & Annecy is a dream!" Like Geneva, Annecy is also a lakefront mountain town over the border in France, about an hour's drive or bus ride away from Geneva.